In my pursuit towards financial freedom, I have been able to narrow down my goals and realize key elements that I want to focus on for my career and life style.

I have now managed to categorize and budget my expenses, long term and short term savings accounts, and I have begun to understand tax rules and how they affect investment accounts and options.

Nonetheless, I still find it difficult to determine the order and priority to assign to saving, paying off debts, investing, and business start ups.

There are so many competing philosophies on this topic, and I believe that there truly is not any one answer. Most advisors and financial ‘gurus’ will base their recommendations for you based on your risk tolerance, age and stage in life, and other factors. Lately, many advisors are much more conservative in their recommendation that you save and save and save your money for emergencies.

Here’s a look at what our short term plan is to balance all of these categories:

Save

Short Term Savings for Spending: I am doing a better job of setting aside small amounts towards short term savings goals including a wedding gift fund, a car maintenance fund and a tuition fund for my husband’s college.

Long Term Savings: We also are saving towards longer term savings goals such as our contingency fund, software business expenses and my daughter’s education fund.

Pay Off / Reduce Debt

We are selling out house in an effort to reduce our debts and get to a level where we are more comfortable with our savings options. It hasn’t sold yet though (bummer!). I’m also looking forward to renting and not owning for a while so that we have a bit more flexibility with where we live.

Besides this, I used some of our tax refund to go towards our car loan. One of our goals is to pay off our 7 year car loan in 1.5 years. That will involve some aggressive payments. According to the calculator I used something like paying $150/month more than what we owe. I am considering setting up a bi-weekly payment also for this to help reduce the balance and interest paid. This will allow us to begin paying off our new student loans for my husband’s college expenses. They aren’t huge, but we’d like to be able to make that transition. So, paying off the car loan debt is definitely a focus for us.

Invest

I invest in my 401k, but it mostly depresses me to follow it. No matter how I allocate it, it vastly under peforms the S&P 500 index fund.

Beyond that, I am in the process of transitioning my Traditional IRA to an online brokerage. I also am opening up a Roth IRA, but realistically won’t be able to contribute to it until our home is sold.

I’ll be moving my daughter’s certificate to a 529 College Invest plan in April.

Building Businesses

I don’t plan on building just one business, I plan on having multiple, including the consulting business that I already operate. I want to focus my efforts on business opportunities but once they are developed and running well, I would like to diversify and branch into other businesses (hopefully product based) for multiple income streams. This is not an overnight thing, but I firmly believe that this is possibly the most valuable thing I could be spending my time and some amount of investment on. Plus, I think this is what America needs right now. More start up small businesses, more entrepreneurs to get things moving.

As much as I am happy to be making efforts in many financially-savvy categories, I do still struggle with balancing and prioritizing them. I’d love your insight on this.

photo by calliope

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Credit.com Offers a Different Perspective from CreditKarma.com

Credit.com offers an additional resource that can complement your use of CreditKarma.com (read my review) or other credit report services.

Though Credit.com doesn’t offer as much detail or tools as CreditKarma.com, it did give me a higher overall score, which I found interesting. It ranked me as A to A- for all categories, where as on CreditKarma.com I had D in a few different categories such as length of open debt. From what I’ve read, the discrepancy is based on the recency of the data as well as which credit agency it is using to determine your score, and supposedly CreditKarma doesn’t go back in date as far as Credit.com does.  This factor alone is enough to take a closer look at Credit.com for accuracy.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Credit.com determines your score to be based on the following categories:

• Payment History (35%) Simply put - you have to pay your bills on time.
• Debt Useage (35%) Keeping low balances and having higher limits for your debt increases this value.
• Credit Age (15%) If you have accounts that have been opened for a while, this helps this score. (CreditKarma and Credit.com have very different perspectives on this)
• Account Mix (10%) Types of debt that you have (mortgage, credit cards, other loans)
• Inquiries (10%) Its a good idea not to have too many inquiries to your score (I’ve read that if you shop around, say for a mortgage, and have multiple pulls of your credit in a 2 week period, this doesn’t affect your score as much, but don’t quote me on this)

Keep in mind that for the full detail on actual accounts that are included on your credit report you’ll have to purchase one or get your free annual report. Under the FACT Act you are required to have access to at least 1 free credit report a year, and you can get that at http://www.annualcreditreport.com. This looks at the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. They will also report on court records for lawsuits, judgments and bankruptcy filings.

You can also possibly obtain your free credit report from your local credit union. The one I work at in Boulder provides a review of your credit report free to its members.

Its always a good idea to check your credit report, if at minimum to monitor and ensure that you don’t have any fraudulent activity. Also though, to learn how to improve it as I am.

Here’s a nice comparison: http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/2009/09/30/credit-report-cards-credit-com-vs-credit-karma/

What do you use to monitor your credit score and credit report? Do you use a credit monitoring or  identity theft service?

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Think Twice Before You Cut Up Your Old Credit Cards

A Truly Free Credit Score and Helpful Analysis of the Factors Affecting Your Credit

Unlike many of the ‘free’ credit score sites out there that say they are free, Credit Karma truly is free.

Credit Karma provides secure access to your credit score with many features that help you analyze how your debt and payment has affected your overall score.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Not only does this tool provide you with your credit score, it shows you:

• A Report Card of the factors that affect your score and where you fall
• Your score and how it shifts over time with charts and graphs
• A snapshot of where your score is compared to the national average
• A comparison of your credit to other members of the Credit Karma community
• A credit simulator that suggests how changes will impact your credit score (My score went up 8 points if I added a new credit card with a 3500 limit, crazy!)
• They also have helpful debt calculators such as mortgage affordability, debt payoff calculators, etc

What I found most interesting was the section called “Report Card”. It ranks certain criteria that is used to determine your credit score from A through F. It was very helpful for me, because I realized something critical in the way I have been managing credit cards and how I will manage them moving forward.

I have to admit, I was one of the typical college students that fell prey to the open 3 or 4 credit cards during the freshman orientation. I didn’t spend a lot on these cards, but when I wised up, I took the advice of someone that I should close any cards that I’m not using as that negatively affects my credit. So, I’ve been doing that over the years. When I don’t want a card any more, I close it. WRONG!

It turns out I have a “D” score on my credit score (which is overall “good” right now at 729) for Average Age of Open Credit Lines as well as Total Accounts. I’m very intrigued by the fact that doing something as simple as keeping some of my unused credit cards open will improve my credit score. I had NO idea. And as such I always close old cards that I’m no longer using.

Another thing I found interesting was that if you opened and did a balance transfer, with the simulator your score went down. However, if you just open a new credit card, your score goes up. I suppose this is because it indicates that you can handle more debt.

I highly suggest trying this tool out, if you are willing to overlook the offers and sales pitches on the page, it is a great way to actively monitor and improve your credit score.

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